Auction 1 - Rare Hebrew Books, Manuscripts & Rabbinic Letters
Lot 15:
Description
Constantinople: Solomon ben Isaac Jabez, [begun 1559; completed 1561].
R. Eliyahu Mizrahi – She’elot u-teshuvot.
First edition.
Constantinople: Solomon ben Isaac Jabez, [begun 1559; completed 1561].
The first edition of the responsa of Rabbi Elijah Mizraḥי (c.1455–1526), universally recognized as the foremost halakhic authority of the Ottoman Empire during the generation following the Expulsion from Spain. His responsa illuminate virtually every aspect of sixteenth-century Jewish life, including the integration of Iberian refugees into established Romaniote communities, communal governance, Karaite-Jewish relations, commercial disputes, marriage law, and rabbinic jurisprudence. They also preserve valuable autobiographical details and references to many of the leading rabbinic figures of the period.
This volume is notable as the inaugural publication of Solomon ben Isaac Jabez’s Constantinople press, one of the most important Hebrew printing houses of the Ottoman Empire. Printing commenced in Adrianople on 5 Tishrei 5320 (1559), but an outbreak of plague forced the printer to relocate to Constantinople, where the work was completed on 15 Sivan 5321 (1561). Jabez’s press would subsequently issue more than forty Hebrew works, culminating in the celebrated Constantinople Talmud of 1583–93.
Condition: Title page with minor professional reinforcements. Light marginal staining to several leaves. Numerous responsum numbers supplied in an early manuscript hand. Does not contain the original siman 66 (cf. Berliner) as with nearly all copies. Attractive later full leather tooled binding. .
Reference: Berliner, Kovetz al yad 7 (1895); Heller, Sixteenth 499; Starr, Jewish Life in Crete JQR 12 (1942) 59.
Provenance: The collection of Abraham Lieberman, Flatbush, Brooklyn NY
Opening price: $2000
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